The house is located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a gated suburban neighborhood. In the back of the lot, there is a navigable river that communicates with the Rio de la Plata Delta from where you can reach the Republic of Uruguay. This is a very remarkable feature of the place, as the water gives us the possibility not only to take a daily water sport practice , having a mooring at the back of the house, but specially to enjoy a unique environment and landscape.
The client is a couple looking for a house with a very closed contact with nature (the man loves sailing and fishing and the woman, gardening) and where they could spend time with their children and grandchildren, doing outside and water activities. The house is used in a semi permanent way by the couple and is ready to host the rest of the family (children / grandchildren).
The lot is a rectangle of 20 meters wide and 45 meters deep. Taking advantage of the great development of the land and in order to be closer to the river, the main volume of the house was moved to the back. This allowed us to generate an access courtyard at the front that functions as transition between the street (noise) and the house (silence). This courtyard has a pond, a waterfall and a bridge that define the entry, plus the garage and a long low wall that is used as a seat to enjoy the sunsets . On the other side of the house, the great social space is linked to a terrace through a window that can be completely opened , erasing the boundaries between interior and exterior space , strengthening the relationship with the garden and the river views.
The functional program is divided into two levels and is composed as follows: in the ground floor , the main protagonist is the large and integrated social space (living and dining room, kitchen and terrace), completed with its services. Also at that level is located the master bedroom, to provide easy accessibility to the owners and reducing the living area while they are alone. In the first floor, two guest bedrooms with bathroom were located in order to accommodate their children visit and a multi-purpose space that functions as a playroom and group bedroom for the grandchildren, in order to stimulate bonds and memories between cousins in the house of the grandparents. This space, semi-private, is adjacent to the double height living-room and has a terrace from where it is dominated much of the landscape.
Morphologically, the house is composed of two elements: at ground level, a gray "ribbon" goes up, down , folds , bends or turns ... to configure each interior space and define the different ways in which they relate with the outside. On it, the other element, the "black box ", which is operated to generate the access , get views , allow the entry of the overhead lighting and create , through the double height space, the spatial fluidity between the living-room and the multipurpose space . The black box is perforated, stretches up , down, breaks ... fits on the tape.
The search of the project had to do with the great natural potential of the site, working with the idea of contrasts in the observer perception. The house is shown dark and solid in the outside and clear and bright in the inside. This was achieved by working with the overhead light provided by skylights and exploiting the different use of colors such as black and white. We can highlight the skylight of the main bedroom, that together with the window , achieve an extended view of the landscape and sky. The skylight that is in the double height, has an east-west direction and provides natural light from sunrise to sunset. This, in addition to generating energy savings, provides a temporal view of space , where the sun, every hour , deploys its different shades and colors of light.
